E-mail Marketing: 13 Services To Help You Make Contact

In my last post, I wrote about some of the benefits of e-mail marketing and how you can use it to advance your prospects, share information and start a conversation with potential clients. In this post, I will list 12 online e-mail marketing services that you can use to execute your well-planned campaigns.

1. Campaign MonitorDisclaimer: Campaign Monitor is the email marketing tool that we use here at SitePoint to send all of our newsletters. We weighed up a few different services before choosing to run with the Campaign Monitor guys. In the end it came down to a combination of the tool having such a beautiful user interface and the fact that the team were so responsive to any questions we had, bugs we reported and features we suggested.

2. AWeber
You can send standard e-mail newsletters, include a signup form on your website, create autoresponders, and turn your blog’s RSS into e-mail. They also have analytics built-in and functionality that allows you to integrate your list with your shopping cart.

3. Benchmark
This service allows you to send e-mail campaigns, create website signup forms, manage an unlimited number of contacts, and view real-time reports. You can also create and customize polls and surveys.

4. Boomerang
You can use HTML templates or create your own, manage bounces and view extensive click-through report. This service also allows you to send faxes and letters in addition to e-mail. download movies

5. Bronto
With this service you can create messages using the WYSIWYG editor, HTML, text editor or import from a web page, send e-mail-based surveys, and get detailed reports. You can also download the reports into Excel.

6. Campaigner
You can use one of the 450 e-mail templates or design your own, create sign-up forms for your website, and get real-time analytics. They will also host your campaign images and graphics through their service.

7. Constant Contact
You can create messages using an e-mail wizard, edit stylesheets, use an autoresponder, host up to 5 images free on their site and review tracking and reports. They also provide a number of tutorials and webinars.

9. GetResponse
This service allows you to send an unlimited number of e-mails, manage and segment your list, review reports and integrate your blog. Their site also states that soon you will be able to include audio and video in your messages.

11. JangoMail
This service allows you to send HTML and plain text messages together, attach up to 20 files per email campaign, and segment your list. You can also see how your e-mail campaign renders in major email clients, like Outlook, Thunderbird, GMail, Yahoo Mail, and others.

12. MailChimp
You can import existing lists from Excel, Salesforce, and Highrise, customize website signup forms, manage your list and track statistics. They also offer add-on features such as integrating Google Analytics, list segmentation and dynamic content functionality. Disclaimer: MailChimp are a current advertising partner with sitepoint.com.

13. Vertical Response
You can collect responses to online surveys, host your images, see real-time statistics, segment your list and integrate Google Analytics. This service also allows you to send e-mail messages as well as direct mail postcards.

Most of the services listed above start at $10 per month and go up from there (some have free trials), or they charge per e-mail sent. The monthly cost you can expect to pay will depend on the number of contacts, frequency of mailings, and other advanced features.

Do you manage e-mail marketing campaigns for your business? What type of information do you send out and what response do you get?

Aw, an Australian company (SitePoint) not supporting a major Australian email service (Campaign Monitor)?

http://www.dangrossman.info Dan Grossman

Campaign Monitor is great for selling email marketing to your clients if you’re a designer. But as a standalone service to use as a marketer yourself, it’s pretty expensive. A lot of the services above will do the same for much less cost.

engkiat

I run a branding agency in Singapore, we use Interspire Email Marketer which installs on our dedicated server and practically just buy user licenses for our clients.

They manage their own contact list which is unlimited, have website forms, auto responders, statistics, built in templates, export contacts into csv etc.

Its affordable on a long term basis, but of course, it is a jack of all trades, unlike mail chimp or campaign monitor which has very very detail statistics reports and some very focused features which not everyone will use.

Alessandra

Are there any free open-source solutions, similar to what DimDim does for webconferencing?

http://www.redfishbluefishdesign.com jeffvdovjak

anyone aware of open source that can be setup on the server?

Colin Scroggins

To leave out an obvious contender like Campaign Monitor, which has in my experience been the best of these types of services and also provides a lot of leadership in the responsible email marketing space, seems like an intentional slight. Whether intentional or careless, it is one that will keep me from linking or forwarding this article.

ufonyx

@jeffvdovjak – I have used PHPlist (phplist.com) successfully in the past on several projects. Not sure how well it scales to very large mailing lists, but I have been happy with its performance on the largest list I’ve worked on, which had about 10,000 addresses. If you happen to have a cPanel server with Fantastico, it should be available right through that. Hope it helps!

Brian Allen

Campaign Montior is amazing.

http://www.magain.com/ Matthew Magain

The omission of Campaign Monitor from the list was an oversight on our behalf — we’ve updated the post to include them. We actually use Campaign Monitor to send all of our own newsletters: the Tribune, the Tech Times, the Design View and the Community Crier. And we couldn’t be happier with the product and the service that the FreshView team provide (Sorry Dave, Matt, Ben et al!)

essexboyracer

Yesmail?

JulyBaby

As mentioned above, leaving Interspire’s Email Marketer off this list is quite strange. It trumps all of these in terms of features (they also have a hosted version at BigResponse.com):

Thanks for all the comments. Omitting Campaign Monitor was just an oversight, but I’m glad they’re represented now.

Since these posts can’t possibly include all options, your comments/additions are always welcome and appreciated in order to provide readers with a well-rounded list of services.

Dave Fiore

Alyssa — Thanks for sharing all the options for do-it-yourself, online email marketing services. I just wanted to add an option that offers a significant alternative. davemail (http://www.mydavemail.com) offers writing, editing, custom design, mailing-list management and tracking reports — so busy small-business owners can have a great newsletter — even if they don’t have the time to do it themselves. All we need is some direction on content and then we run with it from there. It kind of levels the playing field so these businesses can strengthen relationships with their customers and still stay focused on what they do best — running their business. That’s why I created davemail, and the idea seems to be catching on. Thanks for the chance to tell you about it.

MailChimp got the vote for my site. They’ve got a great API that makes it easy to customize your lists and campaigns.

Ravedesigns

Love Interspires products too, but I’m guessing Email Marketer was left out of this list of SERVICES because it’s something you install and run on your own server.

Now they do have a hosted version at http://www.bigresponse.com/ that compares favorably to many of the other services listed here, but anyone considering a service should evaluate them carefully to be sure they meet your needs.

I’d say they’re all excellent services, but some do things better than others and pricing models are different so you should take advantage of the free trials offered to see what works best for you.

Steve

Toni Starks

Great list, we recently started using http://www.easymsg.com and I think they deserve a mention. The great thing about their service is that they only charge you for what you send. No monthly fees or hidden charges. Works perfectly for our company as we only send email blasts occasionally. They even helped us with design!

A nice list, but I think I can add at least one application to it – Quote Roller at http://www.quoteroller.com . This software allows you to create and send business proposals by e-mail and gives you a possibility to track them – you can see whether your client opened your proposal or not. Besides, your client can even sign it online. Proposals can be created with a help of a huge library of business proposal samples. You can try a free account and check it.